A Return to Fidelity

The weather in Yanai has, of late, left something to desire. Biting cold days give way to disgustingly humid nights, with rain and thunder punctuated by the occasional mosquito advance. It's not fun. But alas, these tropical fluctuations are one of the many prices paid by we merry few who insist teaching in the tropics. Thank Christ for multi-functional air-con units.

Amidst the fluctuous weather, little writing has been done, though books have been devoured at an alarming rate (not good news seeing as I shall soon be paying through the nose to have more tomes shipped back and forth). However, we do have a return to a familiar author in the first of my literary reviews...

Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby, 2009)

4 Stars

I have been an avid follower of Hornby for many years now, having first picked up the modern masterpiece that is High Fidelity when I was about eighteen and falling utterly in love with it. Indeed, not classing young Alice Pelling of my kindergarten years, I would probably count HF as my first true love. A book so believable yet bitter has, in my humble opinion, rarely surfaced.

In recent years however, I have found myself somewhat falling out of favour with Hornby. Maybe it is the pedistal on which I raised him, but recent ventures such as Slam and A Long Way Down failed to live up to the legacy of High Fidelity and its follow-up About a Boy.

As such, I was tentative about getting too excited about his new venture, Juliet, Naked, and was made even moreso by the sappy "chick-lit" style blurb. Indeed, it found itself very near the bottom of my Christmas reading barrel.

But I needn't have been so concerned; within pages, I was enraptured. Juliet, Naked tells the tale of Annie, a middle aged woman, unhappy in her relationship with nerdy Duncan, who leaves him after discovering his infidelity, only to end up finding herself in a cross-Atlantic relationship with the reclusive rock star Tucker Crowe; the object of her former beau's obsession.

Hornby's portrayal of mundanity in a sleepy British seaside town is beautifully hilarious, and I often found myself harking back to lazy days in Aberystwyth wondering how such a fusty town still manages to keep going.

It's an interesting yarn, and one of the few books I have read of late that really had me wondering how things would turn out. And wonderfully, you don't really know... Tender hooks are very much left hanging at the end.

Juliet, Naked reads like the illegitimate love child of High Fidelity; an infusion of heartache and rock'n'roll, but this time from a female perspective. Kudos to Hornby for once again creating a genuinely empathic heroine, whilst at the same time giving a true reality to a story that many other authors would have otherwise made ridiculous.

Touching, thought-provoking, and guaranteed to put a smile on your face.